Vulgate

The Vulgate Bible is an early 5th century translation of the Bible into Latin made by St. Jerome on the orders of Pope Damasus I. It takes its name from the phrase versio vulgata, "the common (i.e., popular) version" (cf. Vulgar Latin), and was written in an everyday Latin used in conscious distinction to the elegant Ciceronian Latin of which Jerome was a master. The Vulgate was designed to be both more accurate and easier to understand than its predecessors. It was the first, and for many centuries the only, Christian Bible translation that translated the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew original rather than indirectly from the Greek Septuagint.

The Clementine Vulgate

This edition of the Vulgate is the one most familiar to Catholics who have lived prior to the reforms of Vatican II (which greatly reduced the role of Latin in liturgy). Over the course of the Middle Ages, the original Vulgate of Jerome had succumbed to the inevitable changes wrought by human error in the countless copying of the text in monasteries across Europe. No one copy was the same as the other as scribes added, removed, misspelled, or erroneously "corrected" verses in the Latin Bible. There were efforts to purify the corrupted text, notably by Alcuin of York in the early 9th century during the reign of Charlemagne. This correction was the basis for the Paris edition that was widely disseminated among the clergy in northwestern Europe. Though the advent of printing greatly reduced the potential of human error and increased the consistency and uniformity of the text, even the Vulgate as produced by Gutenberg was not entirely without mistakes as the several editions of the first printed work varied one from the other. After the Reformation, when the Church of Rome strove to counter the attacks and refute the doctrines of Protestantism, the Vulgate was reaffirmed in the Council of Trent as the sole, authorized text of the Bible. To reinforce this declaration, attempt was made to standardize the spelling and overall text of the Vulgate out of the countless editions, written and printed, produced during the Middle Ages. The actual first manifestation of this authorized text was sponsored by Pope Sixtus V (1585-90), known as the Sistine Vulgate, but was soon repudiated with the advent of the next pope, Clement VIII (1592-1605) who immediately ordered a new edition. This "Clementine" Vulgate of 1592 became the standard Bible text of the Catholic Church until the 1960s, when worship in vernacular languages was permitted.

Related Topics:
Vatican II - Vulgate - Alcuin - Charlemagne - Gutenberg - Reformation - Protestantism - Council of Trent - Pope Sixtus V - Clement VIII - Catholic Church

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